Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 6, 1991 TAG: 9104060334
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Frances Stebbins
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Maddex, 76, has served as the part-time director of Baptist Visitation Ministry, covering the Roanoke Valley and Botetourt, for almost 12 years. He and secretary Sandra McLaurin coordinate the visits of 480 Southern Baptist volunteers to 18 nursing homes in the Roanoke Valley.
Maddex said he does not plan to take his second retirement any time soon. McLaurin came to the job last year after Helen Watkins retired; she had been with the ministry from its beginning.
The innovative visitation ministry brings together church members - 75 percent are women and 50 percent are of retirement age - and residents of nursing homes. At least once a month, the volunteers see residents with whom they have been matched. Maddex said many volunteers go weekly and even help with feeding the frail elderly.
The ministry is valuable for both home residents and volunteers, the director said. Many of the elderly patients have no family coming to see them regularly. The visitors become their major outside contacts, often for several years.
The valley's increasing retirement-age population also provides a pool of compassionate and involved church people who need to be needed, Maddex noted.
"Some people ask me if it's depressing to form friendships with old people who are going to die soon anyway. I say if you're going into this personal ministry to get something for yourself, that may be so. If you're looking for a way to serve others, it's really inspiring."
In the 18 years since the late Rev. G. Palmer Belcher and Watkins started the visitation experiment with a few congregations, it has grown to involve volunteers from 48 of the 70 Southern Baptist churches in the Roanoke Valley Association.
It's a big job for McLaurin to keep up with residents and visitors involved in the 750 calls that are made monthly. The tally of total visits is approaching 20,000.
Today the volunteers are being honored at their annual spring luncheon.
Maddex said it costs about $20,000 annually for small salaries for himself and McLaurin. Token gifts also are provided for each home resident on Valentine's Day. Aaron J. Conner - Roanoke County contractor, Baptist layman and long a friend of Maddex - pays the full cost, the director noted.
Of the churches involved, Oakland leads in the number of volunteers with about 50. Other top supporters are Villa Heights and Bonsack churches. Meadowbrook nursing facility at Shawsville is served entirely by members of Big Spring Baptist at Elliston, Maddex said.
The ministry has been non-sectarian from the start, the director emphasized. Baptists predominate among those visited, but "We are there for anyone needing us, not just people from our churches. If residents want to discuss their faith, they bring up the subject and our volunteers respond as they see appropriate, but we have never seen our role as evangelists or promoters of Baptist doctrines."
Frederick Buechner, whose devotional books have been popular for 25 years with American Christians, has written: "To eat this particular meal [communion] together is to meet at the level of our most basic humanness which involves our need, not just for food, but for each other. I need you to help fill my emptiness just as you need me to help fill yours."
Such sentiments were echoed on Maundy Thursday night in the sermon the Rev. Gary Schroeder preached at the first intentionally ecumenical service Episcopalians, Lutherans and Roman Catholics have conducted since their representatives signed a covenant of cooperation in November.
Though the LARC Covenant - the "A" in the acronym stands for the Episcopalians' worldwide name of Anglican - was publicized nationally, relatively few events have been held in Western Virginia to give it meaning.
But in Blacksburg Lutherans, Episcopalians and Catholics averaged 90 in attendance for each of a series of Lenten discussions on how their faith helps them make sense of a mixed-up world.
More than 100 turned out for the closing event, a joint Communion service in which Lutheran pastor Schroeder and Episcopal priest Martin Townsend joined in saying the consecration prayer over unleavened bread and wine. The elements symbolic of Jesus' body and blood had been on tables in the Christ Episcopal parish hall as part of a soup-and-fruit supper.
Roman Catholic priest Paul Gallagher could not join in the consecration prayer. His branch of Christendom does not permit participation in a non-Catholic service. But Gallagher took a major part in the closing minutes of the worship, the ancient ritual known as Tenebrae.
As the congregation at Christ Episcopal read a long psalm from the book of Lamentations, lights were gradually extinguished as Christ's light went out following his death on the cross.
The three clergymen said they were pleased the turnout for the education series was so good and that those who came to the service joined in to the extent with which they felt comfortable.
These included some Catholics who said they saw the act of sharing communion as a gesture of unity with which Jesus would have been pleased.
by CNB